Expertise Level Estimation of Library Books by Patron-Book Heterogeneous Information Network Analysis -- Concept and Applications to Library's Learning Assistant Service

Abstract

In this paper we deal with estimating the ranks of library books in their expertise levels. The estimated ranking score is applicable to library-provided learning assistant service. Due to the advancement of information society, library is expected to change in order to meet the patrons' needs. Helping patrons with learning is a key service for libraries. We put emphasis on the learning material recommendation facility for assisting learning patrons and we put focus on material book's expertise level estimation for recommending the material(s) to be learned to the patrons in this paper. As the very first step toward this direction we propose two candidate measures for expertise level ranking, calculate the books expertise level ranking scores, compare them, and evaluate the potential usefulness of this approach. Even though the precision is not yet very high right now, we are expecting the measure can become more precise in the future research and thus becomes practically applicable to libraries.